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Poppy was the other Englishwoman Cailean had known who was as adept at flirtation as Lady Chatwick. She had destroyed any notion that he might have had about complicating his life with a wife and children.
Aye, his world had narrowed considerably since that wound was opened.
He’d only just reached his majority when he met her. He’d spent that unusually cool summer in England, at Norwood Park, his mother’s familial estate, under the less-than-watchful eye of his uncle Knox. The winsome, beautiful Poppy Beauly was the daughter of his mother’s very dear friend, and Cailean had been truly and utterly smitten.
Over the course of that summer, he’d wooed Poppy and professed his esteem to her more than once. For that, he’d received her warm encouragement. He’d been so green that he’d even dreamed of the house he would build for her, of the children they would bring into this world.
Poppy had given him every reason to believe she shared his feelings. “However, I am sure you understand that I must come out before I will be allowed to receive any offers,” she’d warned him. “I won’t come out until my eighteenth birthday.” Then she’d proceeded to assure him with a passionate kiss that had left Cailean feeling as if he might explode with need.
Cailean had waited. He’d spent another year aboard his father’s ship, and the following summer he’d returned to Norwood Park. Poppy had been happy to see him. She had made her debut, and while he knew she had other suitors, she still encouraged his pursuit of her, and quite unabashedly, too. He was her prince, she said. He was so kind, she said. She held him in such great esteem, she said.
At the end of that extraordinary summer, with Uncle Knox’s blessing, Cailean had offered for her hand.
Much to his surprise and humiliation, Poppy Beauly had been appalled by his offer. She’d snatched her hand back as if she feared contagion. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Mackenzie,” she’d said, reverting to addressing him formally. “I must beg your forgiveness if I’ve given you even the slightest reason to believe that I could possibly accept an offer.”
“You’ve given me every reason to believe that you would!” he’d exclaimed, horrified by his stupidity.
“No, no,” she’d said, wringing her hands. “I have enjoyed your company, but surely you knew I could never marry a Scot, sir.”
As if he were diseased. As if he were less than human.
The rejection, the realization that Poppy Beauly did not love him as he loved her had devastated the young man Cailean had been. He had loved her beyond reason, obviously, and had limped back to Scotland with his broken heart.
He’d taken a solitary path away from that wound, away from privileged young women with the power to slay him. His tastes ran to widows and lightskirts and, if he was entirely honest, he enjoyed his own damn company above most.
“Leave him be, Margot,” his father said, chuckling. “Cailean follows his own path.”
His mother knew this very well, and yet she never gave up hope. “He could just as easily follow his own path to the altar,” she said, her attention locked on her oldest child. “He’s not as young as he once was, is he?”
“Màthair!” Cailean said and chuckled at her relentless desire to see him wed. “I will thank you to mind your own affairs, aye?” He leaned back, glancing away from them, smiling smugly at their inability to affect him.
He did not mention that he’d seen Lady Chatwick in her bedclothes, had seen her bare shoulder, had seen the swell of her breasts. Or that she had the blondest hair he’d ever seen—the pale yellow of late summer, which, when he thought of it, was the only color of hair that could possibly complement pear-green eyes. He didn’t admit that he had noticed her small nose with a scattering of freckles across the bridge, or the wide, full lips that ended at a dimple in her cheek.
Cailean was not meant to marry and provide heirs, obviously. He was five and thirty, for God’s sake. He was happy to let the reins of Balhaire and the Mackenzie fortune pass to his brothers’ children someday. He would carry on as he had these last fifteen years, bringing in the occasional hold of illegal wine or tea or tobacco and building his house. He would not concern himself with an Englishwoman foolish enough to come here. No amount of cajoling from his mother would change it.
But his mother’s theory about his new neighbor stuck with Cailean, and when he happened upon Lady Chatwick a few days later, he couldn’t help but see her in a wee different light.
A very suspicious light.
He was walking up from the loch with four trout on his line. Fabienne had raced ahead, chasing after a scent she’d picked up. He watched her disappear through the break in the wall around Auchenard, and a few moments later, burst through again, racing across the meadow, her tail high, alert to something in the woods.
Just behind her, Lady Chatwick pushed through the opening, stumbling a bit as she squeezed through the wall, batting away vines of clematis, then catching her wide-brimmed straw hat before it toppled off her head. She put her hands on her hips and called after the dog. She hadn’t yet seen Cailean—and didn’t until he whistled for Fabienne.
Both dog and woman turned toward him. Fabienne obediently began to lope toward him. Lady Chatwick folded her arms across her body and shifted her weight to her hip with the attitude of an inconvenienced female.
Cailean continued walking through the meadow toward her, his plaid brushing the tops of the tall grass, his fishing pole propped on his shoulder. When he reached her, he jammed the end of his rod into the ground. The fish swung near his shoulder.
“What do you think you are doing?” she asked imperiously.
What had happened to the flirtatious little chit? The husband hunter? The color in her cheeks was high, the shine in her eyes even brighter in full sun. And there was a curious smear of blood on the back of her left hand. “What would you think, then?” he asked, gesturing grandly to the fish hanging from the pole.
“You have not been invited to fish my lake! Sir Nevis warned of poachers—”
“Poachers?” He snorted with disdain as he withdrew a handkerchief from the pocket of his waistcoat. “I donna need an invitation to fish the loch. It is no’ yours. It couldna possibly be. Your land lies beyond that wall and to the east.”
“What?” She turned to look behind her with such force that her thick braid swung around and over her shoulder. “No, you are mistaken. My uncle said my land extends from the point where the lake empties into the sea,” she said and pointed.
“Aye, your uncle is correct. But the loch meets the sea there.” He covered her outstretched hand with his and moved it around so that she was pointing in the opposite direction. Her hand felt delicate in his, like a child’s, and he felt a jolt of something quite warm and soft sluice through him.
Her brow creased with a frown. “Are you certain?”
“Diah, as if I could possibly be wrong. The loch belongs to no one. We may all fish there. You’re bleeding.”
“Pardon?” She looked back at him, startled.
“Your hand,” he said, and turned it palm up. “May I?” he asked, holding up his handkerchief.
She glanced at her hand, nestled in his. Her frown deepened. “Oh, that wretched garden! It is my greatest foe. You need not fear being invited to a garden party after all, my lord, for it would seem that with every weed or vine I cut, another lurks behind it.” She squinted at her palm, sighing, then glanced up at him through her long lashes. “My hands are quite appalling, aren’t they?”
“Aye, they are,” he agreed. They were surprisingly roughened and red. She looked like a crofter in her worn muslin gown and leather apron, with the tiny river of dirt that had settled in the curve of her neck into her shoulder. He watched a tiny bead of perspiration slip down her collarbone and disappear between her breasts.
He had an abrupt but strong urge to swipe that bit of perspiration from her chest with the pad of his thumb.
“I hadn’t realized how bad they are,” she said, gazing at her hand.
He looked at it, too—at the long, tapered fingers, the smooth stretch of almost translucent skin across her inner wrist. He had another puzzling urge—to lift her wrist to his nose and sniff for the scent of perfume.
He wiped away a bit of dirt from her palm. “Your eyes are very blue,” she said.
He looked up; she was observing him with a softness in her eye he didn’t like. “Aye,” he said warily and ignored the shiver her slow smile sent rifling through him.
Cailean turned her hand over to examine the back of it. “Have you no gloves, then?” he asked, staring at the many pricks and scratches.
“None that are suitable for that damnable thicket.”
He turned her hand over once more to examine her injured palm. She sported a callous and several pricks here, too, he noticed. “You’ve been hard at work, aye?” He traced his finger across her palm; she immediately tensed, shifting from one foot to the other.
“I think I’ve never worked as hard as this. I know what I should like the garden to be—a square of green and roses surrounding an old fountain...if my uncle can make it function once again. And I’d like benches for sitting and arbors for shade. But I have begun to believe none of it possible.”
Why would she want all that? Gardens required attention year-round. Surely she didn’t intend to stay so long, the little fool. “Is there no one to help you?”
She shook her head. “All hands are needed to finish the repairs to the lodge. Nevertheless, I am determined to return the garden to its former glory.”
He was beginning to wonder if she was truly daft. “There’s never been any glory to Auchenard,” he said flatly.
“Pardon?”
“Since I was a wee lad,” Cailean said, pausing when she sucked in a breath when he dabbed at the cut in her hand, “it has no’ been properly kept, aye? MacNally was no’ entirely responsible for its decline.”
She stared at him, clearly not understanding, eyes framed with lashes light in color but quite long. “Then who is?” she asked.
“The Sassenach who claimed it, that’s who. Your husband, his father before them—they didna care for Auchenard, much less a bloody garden.”
“Really?” She looked disappointed, as if she believed if she kept digging and cutting, kept rooting out the weeds that choked the life from all other vegetation, she’d discover some secret garden underneath the growth.
He returned his attention to her palm. “Did no one tell you, then? Auchenard has no’ been inhabited in many years.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a weary sigh. “Someone may have told me. In fact, I am certain someone did. But I didn’t listen.”
What a curious thing to say—why wouldn’t she have listened to wiser heads? Ah, of course—because that pretty head of hers was filled with cake. He dabbed at her palm again and she sucked in her breath, wincing.
“You’ve a bit of a thorn or wood embedded in your flesh,” he said. “Shall I remove it?”
She looked uncertainly at him. “I, ah...yes, if you would be so kind?”
He wasn’t that kind, but he pulled a dirk from his belt. She gasped loudly and tried to pull her hand free.
“Be still, lass.”
“I’d rather—”
He didn’t wait for her to refuse. He made a tiny nick. It startled her and she cried out, then bit down on her lip as he carefully worked out the bit of wood. “Oh,” she said, once he had removed the bit of thorn. “Oh.”
He watched her closely a moment to assure himself she wouldn’t faint. Her bottom lip was red from where she’d bitten it, and he was suddenly and annoyingly filled with another unwelcome urge—he wanted to bite that plump lip. Suck it in between his teeth and thread his fingers through her gold hair.
“Thank you,” she said.
He removed his gaze from her lush mouth and moved his hand to her wrist, holding it lightly but firmly as he began to wrap her hand with the handkerchief. “You should have it looked after, aye? There is a healing woman in Balhaire.”
“Where?”
“What, then, did you put yourself on a boat and a coach knowing nothing?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” she admitted. “Oh, of course. Balhaire. Where is it?”
“Follow the loch to the sea,” he said. “That way,” he added, pointing. “Ask for Marsaili. And when she’s treated it, ask after passage to England. Enough ships come round—someone will take you.”
She seemed momentarily confused by that, but then something sparked in her eyes. “Why would I do that?” she asked.
“Because you donna belong here,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before you admit it, aye?”
Her gaze narrowed. “So you’ve said, more than once. But I like it here.”
Barmy and daft and stubborn to boot. He didn’t believe for a moment that a lady of her obvious stature enjoyed rough hands and living without all the comforts her title brought her in England. “This sort of life is no’ for refined ladies,” he said.
“How would you know that? Are you some sort of master of refined ladies? I really don’t care for your opinion, sir, for I think it’s starkly beautiful here,” she said emphatically, surprising him somewhat. “It’s rugged and strong and...vast,” she said, nodding as if she’d found the right word. “With a bit of hard work, we might be very happy here.”
“With no society?”
Her face darkened. “Society? You cannot know what a relief it is to escape London society.”
He was ready to question her about that, but she continued. “I like everything about this place, with perhaps the exception of the mist.”
“The mist,” he repeated.
“The mist,” she said, gesturing with her free hand to the sky. “I keep dreaming that I’ve lost my son in it. There he is, and the next moment, poof, he’s disappeared into it,” she said, her fingers fluttering toward the forest.
Cailean might have laughed, but when he was a child, Vivienne used to fear the mist. It rolled in quickly, covering everything. “What color was the mist in your dreams?” he asked as he continued wrapping the handkerchief around her palm.
“The color? White.”
“Sea mist,” he said, and recited an old schoolroom poem. “‘When the mist comes from the hill, foul weather doth it spill. When the mist comes from the sea, fine weather it will be.’ You son will be quite all right in the mist, aye? Many Scottish children before him have found their way home in it.”
Lady Chatwick didn’t immediately respond to that; she kept her intent gaze on him, and Cailean could feel heat spreading in him like a spill of water. It was the sort of heat that stirred all things male. He wanted to kiss her, to lick the perspiration from her breasts. To take them in his mouth, one by one. The heat wended its way down to his groin, and Cailean felt another heat—anger.
He dropped his gaze to her hand. He was angry with himself for having such lustful thoughts for this Englishwoman. He wondered how long it had been since he’d felt lust stirring in him in quite this way, but he couldn’t recall it. He quickly finished tying the handkerchief across her palm. But when he had tied it, he impulsively, cavalierly, lifted her hand and kissed the back of it before letting go. Her fingers slid lightly across his palm, then fell away.
“I beg your pardon, my lord, but are you now trifling with me?” Her gaze slipped to his mouth, and that bothersome heat in Cailean flared again. “Have you forgotten that you do not roundly esteem me?”
“No’ for a moment,” he said and peeled away a bit of her hair that had glued itself to her cheek. “Mind that you clean the wound, aye? A cut to the hand is slow to heal.” He picked up his fishing pole and propped it against his shoulder. “Tiugainn,” he called to his dog, commanding her to come, and walked on from the Lady Chatwick.
“My lord!” she called behind him.
Against his better judgment, Cailean paused and looked back.
“I’ve been—I mean to invite my neighbors to dine. Not a garden party, mind you, but a proper supper. Will you come?”
She was gripping the side of her apron, he noticed, the leather bunched in her hand. “Your neighbors,” he repeated, uncertain just whom she meant, as the sort of neighbors who would be invited to dine with her were quite far from Auchenard and few between besides.
“Yes, my neighbors! I should like to make their acquaintance, naturally. You are my neighbor, are you not? You wouldn’t say, but as you are walking with your fish, I assumed.”
Did she mean to make the acquaintance of the poor crofters? No. She meant to parade eligible bachelors before her. Perhaps she might invite a few of the Jacobites to her table and determine their suitability while she was at it. Or perhaps she meant to start a war.
Cailean abruptly retraced the few steps he’d just taken. “I will speak plainly, madam. You are no’ welcome in these hills. Aye, there will be those enticed by the promise of your fortune, but I’ve no interest in it. I willna vie for your hand if that’s what you seek.”
Color flooded her cheeks. Her brows dipped into a dark V above her eyes. “You flatter yourself quite incomparably, Arrandale! You presume too much! You may think you know something of my situation, but whatever you’ve heard, I assure you, it is not accurate. I invite you only as a neighbor. I thought you might even be my friend!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms wide. “Now I shall be just as plain—no matter if you come or not, you need not remind me of your lack of desire for me ever again. You’ve made it quite clear.”
Cailean didn’t flinch at her dressing-down of him. “Donna look so astounded,” he said. “A friend? Most women who befriend men they scarcely know mean to attach themselves to his purse. Or, in your case, attach him to yours.”
Her mouth gaped open. Something sparked in those green eyes, something hot and glittering, and Cailean could not look away—or ignore that the hot, glittering thing was waking something just as hot in him.
“Ah, I see—you are the prize catch of the Highlands, are you? You must be utterly exhausted from escaping the clutches of so many women. You need not fear my clutches, my lord, for I would never join the chase,” she said and leaned forward, her gaze narrowing slightly. “Never,” she articulated, her voice deadly in its softness. “I live as I please, and it pleases me to trifle with gentlemen—with all gentlemen. Don’t flatter yourself that you are the only one. Don’t imagine that your purse is so fat that I should be tempted by it, for I assure you, mine is much fatter, and I don’t wish to attach anyone to it. If that scandalizes you, then perhaps you should stay away. But if it doesn’t?” She settled back and shrugged insouciantly. “You will be most welcome in my home.”
Cailean was surprised and a wee bit impressed with her admonishment. He couldn’t help but chuckle.
That inadvertent chuckle seemed to vex her even more. “You shouldn’t put so much stock in gossip,” she said, and angrily whirled around, marching away from him, her chin up, her braid bouncing above her derriere with the force of her stride. She stopped at the wall and shouted over her shoulder, rather crossly, “Thank you for tending my hand!” and then disappeared into the break in the wall.
It was perhaps the first time in Cailean’s life that he’d found indignation in a woman so wholly appealing.
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